No no, you people who don’t trust government. You’re only half right. You can’t trust anybody.

Listen, you can’t really hate people for not trusting government. Just look at Congress. 

The most useless people in that useless body are the ones who got into office by running on an anti-government platform. And since Congress is part of government, and the people who ran against useless government are equally useless, you can assume that Congressmen don’t even trust each other. Or themselves.

 So I wasn’t exactly flabbergasted when a publication called Target Marketing reported this morning that people trust business more than government. 

Target Marketing’s report was based on a survey released by a PR firm called Edelman. But in attempting to dig deeper into the report, which wasn’t easy on Edelman’s hard-to-navigate web page, I learned  that just because a lot of people hate Congress more than business, it doesn't mean any love is lost on business, either.

In fact,  “government is still distrusted in 19 of the 27 markets surveyed,” and also, “trust in business is below 50 percent in half those markets.” So people don’t see business as all that trustworthy, either. 

And since business now exerts undue influence on government, by lobbying their bought Congressman – Washington’s favorite indoor sport  – we now have Congress and business slithering  around, building distrust on top of distrust, and chasing chasing their own tails. 

With any luck Congress and business will catch and eat themselves like this snake, that evidently doing a pretty fair job of digesting its own body in its own stomach. (WARNING: Some people may find this video disturbing. Some snakes, Congressmen, lobbyists and business moguls may, as well.)

But Congress and business aren’t the only ones oh the public’s poo list. In addition, “sixty percent of countries now distrust media.” Thanks to all of you who are the ilk of Fox News, Brian Williams, Breitbart and its wannabe pimp and news fake James O’Keefe, and all others who play fast and loose with the facts.

And speaking of mistrust in business, there was yet another story that caught my attention in Target Marketing this morning, and that one was a hair-raiser. It had to do with Dish Network, which evidently has about as much respect for consumers or the regulations of the U.S. Government’s Federal Trade Commission as ISIS does for Charlie Hebdo.

Seems that people have been, and may still be hounded beyond all understanding, even after they put themselves on the Federal Trade Commissions’s Do Not Call List and informed Dish Network of the facts

Target Marketing’s Jeremy Zimmerman reveals:

One FTC report details one woman's struggle:

"One consumer works the night shift at a North Carolina hotel. Turning the phone off when she tries to sleep during the day isn't an option. Her husband has a serious medical condition and she needs to be available in case of emergency. After getting repeated calls about Dish service, she took steps to put an end to the annoyance. She listened to the whole recorded sale pitch, hoping a live person would pick up so she could beg them to stop calling. When she finally got somebody on the line, she told them to put her on their Do Not Call list. She started sleeping on the couch with pencil and paper in hand so she could document the calls when they woke her up. Ultimately, she filed two complaints with her State AG. Dish responded that she probably already was on the company's entity-specific Do Not Call list, but she would be added "in an abundance of caution." But despite all that, the calls kept coming—and according to the government's motion, she was never put on the entity-specific list.

Zimmerman speculates that since Federal Trade Commission rules call for fines of up to $16,000 per violation “Dish will most likely be learning a very pricey lesson on how to treat its customers.”

If I were you, I most likely wouldn't count on that. Maybe some lobbyist will lean on somebody in Congress, to lean on the FTC,  to reduce those fines down to a piffle, and those annoying S.O.B.s at Dish TV will just chuckle. 

Or maybe Zimmerman is merely speculating just as the qualifier he used “most likely” might indicate. (Could Zimmerman's choice of  the phrase “most likely” actually indicate “sorta likely?” Or could Zimmerman be whispering, sotto voce,   “maybe, I hope, I hope.” Or even, “I can’t predict what the FTC will do , but let me throw out a big number and see if it shakes anybody up.”

Meanwhile, I counsel you to trust but verify. And that includes verifying my own stuff, which you can do by following the links in this story.